OGSmokeOnly's Cab Grow - No Till Cycle 1 : Bag A

What's going on RIU?

This will be my first Grow journal in a series of journals I plan to keep for my new SuperCabinet "Superstar" HPS Soil Dual Chamber cabinet. It measures 2ft W x 2ft L by 5ft H and comes with a 150w HPS bulb/lamp (upgradeable to 250w), two 2ft T5 lamps, an exhaust and intake with a carbon filter for each, a third fan for airflow, a screen to SCROG, and a smaller cloning:veg chamber with two more 2ft T5s, a humidity dome and 14 site bubble cloner. It's black stainless steel and is locked with a key. I hear great things about this company and I dropped a pretty penny for this unit. It should be delivered in the next week or two. I've attached a picture.

My next post will be about the soil I mixed today. Before that just kinda wanted to lay some ground rules for my journal. I welcome any and all constructive/positive/honest feedback from anyone with knowledge on the subject. Please no trolling or negativity. It's my first indoor Grow and I am learning just as much as the next guy. I just want to document my results/setup, get some feedback, get better, and hopefully help some others out too.

Enjoy!

Welcome to Riu
Im subbed

Sup smokeonly! That's a cool setup, I have a 150w hps I use in a small room. I'm Looking forward to seeing yours setup and goin'. sub'd as well.

Also, what size pots you figure on using?

GROWING MEDIUM AND METHOD

For these series of grows I intend to alternate two #25 Smartpots on a organic, no till, living soil cycle. By alternate I mean filling two pots with an identical mix of soil/amendments and while one is in the cabinet for a full cycle/harvest the other will be sown with a cover crop mix, essentially waiting on standby. This will allow me to harvest a crop, switch the bags to start a new one, and sow the just harvested bag with a cover crop to let it heal and regenerate. Then repeat so on and so forth. The bags are 21in in diameter and 15in high, so they will fit nicely in the box with a little room on the sides for airflow.

For the soil itself, I am loosely following the 1:1:1 peat, aeration, compost method and adding amnendments. Since mostly everything is sold in large quantities, I used 5 gal Home Depot buckets to make sure the ratios were right. A dry 5 gal bucket equates to 0.77 dry cubic feet. So two buckets of each of the 3 gives me roughly 4.5 cubic feet of soil. Here are my initial inputs:

2 buckets Subshine brand Sphagnum Peat (very moist, doesn't expand much)

2/3 bucket lava rocks
1 1/3 bucket rice hulls

1 bucket worm castings
1/2 bucket ecoscraps compost
1/2 bucket eb stone compost

So I mixed this and didn't like the ratio of rice hulls (the mix wouldn't clump together in my hand, too loose) so I added another bucket of peat and another bucket of compost mix. I think I nailed it at this point and ended up with 6 cuft of mix. Each smartpot bag holds 3 cuft so I'm solid and it made it easier to measure out amendments. So to this I added the following amendments:

2.5 cups DrEarth Brand Tomato fertilizer (blend of alfalfa, kelp, feather meal, fish bone, rock phosphate, and 7 strains of bacteria and both types of mycorrhiza.
3 cups Neem meal (integrated pest management)
3 cups crab meal (for chitin and micronutrients)
6 cups oyster shell flour (ph buffer/calcium)
6 cups Azomite (minerals)
2.5 gal of bio char

Also going to add live red wiggler worms at about 5 per cu ft of soil once I get the mix potted up, so about 15 per bag.

That's it. Mixed it all together and this is what I got (see pictures). Mix is still on my tarp but will be bagging this week.

I also won't get my box for another week or two so this is where I stop for now. Strains to be determined but I'll be sourcing clones from a local shop. I plan on putting 2, maybe 3 plants in the same pot and SCROGing em. I have about 4 years experience growing cannabis and 7 growing vegetables, but all outdoor. I've also had about two years experience with LST (not SCROG, just tie down) but this will be my first go indoors.

Any and all constructive feedback welcome. I'll post again when the box comes in and I'll document the build. Peace for now!

More photos. And thanks Wajimaya and lime73, would love to have you follow along. I may eventually buy a 250w once this one goes out, but excited to see what a 150w can do! And I'm going to do one 25 gal pot, no till with 2-3 plants.

Worms are in on one of the bags. Going to go pickup my second #25 gal smartpot today and fill her up with the rest of my mix and the last of the worms. Was aiming for 15 per but I think I dropped more like 20 in there just for good measure.

Subbed! I love micro grows, best of luck man! Keep us updated

Sweet, glad to have you along for the ride omfg420! Thank you. I will definitely update frequently. Just got an email that my Grow cabinet is being shipped this week so hope to have it by this weekend or early next week!

Got the bags all mulched up. Time to let the soil cook! Hope I'm not boring anyone yet with the lack of pictures of our beloved plant, but I want to document my process!

For the mulching, I first scratched the surface of the soil as they had gone smooth/compressed a bit. I didn't want the bags to cake or layer. So I then put 1/4 cup of the Dr Earth Tom fert (see previous posts) and about an inch of pure compost. Worms would have gotten to it eventually but why make em work too hard lol

So to do a slight side by side (long term, nothing too structured) I put the Ecoscraps compost on top of Bag A and the EB Stone compost on Bag B. Both bags got a sprinkling of ewc's (Salt Bae style) and then about another inch of straw from a local feed store. Got a huge bale for $9.

I also wanted to document the height issue I'm foreseeing. The box is 5 feet minus 1 ft for the Veg chamber then another foot for the lights only leaves me 3 ft for the plant, pot included. Since the pots are 15in, I folded them down about two inches and left about another two inches from that top in soil. So with the inch of compost my soil level will be at about 12 inches with another inch of straw to fill in the pot. That leaves me about 2 feet of growing space. I think that'll be plenty. If you look at the mulched picture above, you'll see where I left space. I pulled the lips back up for now to contain the mulch, but it'll settle soon and I can fold em back down.


Finally for anyone wondering I do have a Filter of Eden chlorine filter from BMS for my yard hose and it works great. Never had issues with chlorine and I use it to make teas, feed the plants, give the dogs water. Everything really. It's raining here so I put the pots outside to get a good soaking. Nothing beats the rain and I won't be able to do it once they're scrogged.

That's it for now! Peace!

Guess what came in today!!!!! The cabinet is here! Time to get growing...as soon as the soil is ready. Arggghhh. Sunday Feb 12th is going to be Day 1:Week 1 so still got a little time before I get them in. All good, gives me time to build it and source clones. I'll update as I build, tough to get out there when raising twins. Haha

Full kit. I'm fuckin in love! Lol There are two carbon filter/exhaust fans that are still in their white boxes at the bottom left of pic.


14 site super cloner with pump, tubing, and air stones. Has 2 inch nets and uses a deep water culture system. Going to use this for my veggie garden as well and seems like a solid setup that can be used for clones and seed starting. The glass is shot glass measuring cup for measuring liquid ferts. Pretty cool extra. Also comes with a 15' 10 socket power strip to plug everything in.


4x 25w 2ft T5 6500K 2k lumen lights. Two for the cloning chamber and two for supp light in the main chamber. They are magnetic and just go right up against any side of the cab. Won't be using cloning chamber too often early on though as I want to try a few different strains from the shop to see which ones I like best. This will allow me to have all four in the main chamber most of the time, adding 100w and 8k lumens to the setup as well as some much needed blue spectrum. This will bring me to 250w and 24k lumens total, which should be plenty to get a nice harvest.


Some intake pipes to run cords and pull in cool air, a 4" fan, 150w HPS light and hood, scrog net w magnetic hooks, moisture meter to stick in the soil, a Shockbuster, hygrometer/thermometer, and timer. There is no intake fan that actively pulls in cold air, but I could replace one of the passive intake pipes with an intake fan if needed. The seller has assured me I probably won't, especially if I run the lights at night/cooler parts of the day. But knowing I could is nice.


Humidity done and rock wool cubes. I also have a heating pad. This will be mainly used for my veggie garden until I can find some good seeds.

Overall super impressed with this cabinet. They thought of everything really. I love that all crevices are sealed against light leaks with that foam tape they use for window ACs. It also locks with a key, essential for keeping the kiddos out.

Peace for now, I'll be posting my compostbtea brewer setup soon!

Ready to grow baby! Still have two weeks until the soil is ready, but the cover crop was laid down and watered in with a compost tea (ewc, compost, molasses, fish hydrosolate, & kelp extract bubbled for 24 hours).


Check out the microbe life on the tea! Water was ice cold, so I bought an aquarium heater for next run to keep the water at a higher temp. I know I can do better! I'll be buying the clones next week

The girls are home! I'll be planting the two best ones tomorrow. Here's my lineup:

1 - Cataract Kush (Indica)
1 - Herojuana OG (Indica)
1 - Platinum Bubba (Indica)
1 - OG-9 (Indica)
1 - Gorilla Glue #4 (Sativa)
1 - GSC (Thin Mint) (Indica)

I do have some doubles for a friend. Anyway, I can only plant two at a time in the box but the others will be going outside to veg and be mothers. It's all veg for the next 6 months outdoors so thatll give me time to see their growth habits and keep the strains going while my first round finishes. Probably going Cataract and OG-9 first.

I will be planting tomorrow and will post pics. The site isn't letting me right now.